I am undecided so far this presidential cycle (other than pledging to work hard and vote for the GOP nominee against Barack Obama). Ronald Reagan is not running, and I am to the Right of all the major candidates. So I have left the primary battle to others and will decide for myself by April 3, the date of the Maryland primary.
But as I watch this crazy political year unfold, I am struck by some unanswered questions that supporters of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have not adequately addressed. (I am focusing on the two frontrunners here.)
Mitt Romney
My unanswered concerns about Mitt Romney are these:
1- Romney has grown more conservative over the last 20 years. Is this political expedience or has he just grown smarter about the world? Romney supporters like Ann Coulter might say this does not matter, since the likelihood of him switching back again is remote – but I think it matters greatly in terms of selecting judges and the deals he will make with Senate Democrats (either because they are still the majority, or filibustering from the minority) on budget, entitlement and tax matters.
2- Related question: how can we be sure he will appoint conservative judges as good as Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts throughout the federal courts, and put his presidency on the line to appoint such judges to the Supreme Court? If one of the Court’s current liberals creates the next Court vacancy and there is a GOP president, the entire Democratic Establishment will take this nation to the brink to protect Roe v. Wade. Union strikes, OWS/Obamaville violence, all out smears from the Democrat MSM – it will get ugly, and the pressure to “compromise” intense. We’ll need a very strong president not to cave and select a Souter in the name of domestic tranquility.
3- How can we be sure he will fight to repeal Obamacare in its entirety, and why has he persisted in his defense of Romneycare? (Did he not read Game Change, which recounts in stunning detail how Hillary Clinton’s steadfast or stubborn refusal to recant her support for the Iraq War cost her the nomination and thus the presidency?) How will Romney contrast his continued support for Romneycare against the unpopular and unconstitutional Obamacare, one of Obama’s biggest vulnerabilities?
4- After all these years running and all the money he and his allies have spent on his behalf, why can’t he seal the deal with GOP voters? What if he just does not “wear well” over time? What if he can’t energize independents this fall the way he has failed to captivate the GOP this primary season?
Newt Gingrich
I have been watching Speaker Gingrich closely for 20 years. When I worked on the Hill in the 1990s, a picture I had taken with him adorned my wall. But I was also Chief of Staff to the back-bench Congressman who was instrumental in forcing him from the Speaker’s Chair after the 1998 election, for abandoning his conservative principles. In recent years, he won me back with his articulate critiques of Obama on Fox News (though the Kenyan neocolonialism riff was lame). And of course, like the rest of us, I have reveled in his debate attacks on the Democratic MSM (I called his courageous response to Juan Williams a “Watershed moment in American politics”).
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this race for me has been many people’s insistence that Gingrich is so much more conservative than Romney. Really? To me, Gingrich and Romney are fairly similar on policy, if not temperament; Gingrich better on Life, Romney better on resisting illegal immigration, but on balance, both have broken with conservative positions in about equal measure. I’d say both are mainstream conservatives who will give movement conservatives heartburn once in office.
(Full disclosure: I consider campaign positions virtually meaningless, especially as compared to past actions. One of my Rules for Life is that you should only believe a candidate’s campaign positions with which you disagree, as the others are unlikely to be reliable.)
So my questions for Gingrich supporters are:
1- Forget primary viability. What about November viability? To beat Obama, we need GOP votes PLUS the votes of independents in swing states. When has Gingrich shown an ability to win the votes of independents? His unfavorables nationally are astronomical. More frightening, his numbers look worse even higher than in 1998, the year he was forced from office. Gingrich supporters need to credibly explain how Gingrich might hope to win swing state independents in the face of this polling data and his 15-year record of extremely high unfavorables. I’m sorry that he, like Sarah Palin, has suffered from more than his share of unfair Democrat MSM lies. Please join me in not subsidizing the out-of-the-Mainstream Media with your TV viewing or print subscriptions. But don’t risk the future of our nation if he can’t win swing state independents.
2- How do you explain Gingrich sharing a loveseat with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi in support of Al Gore’s mendacious and phony Global Warming campaign, with its sharply higher taxes and dramatic expansion of government power over us? This wasn’t in 1992 – it was 2008! Don’t just repeat the spin that he admits it was a mistake. What gives you confidence he would not make the same mistake again, on global warming or some other issue where the liberal consensus appears insurmountable? (After all, the whisper campaign I have heard pro-Newt people make on this issue is that when he did that in 2008, it appeared global warming extremism was the future, and Newt was just trying to maintain his economic viability in the new world.) Truly frightening.
3- Aren’t you concerned that Gingrich seems to have it backwards on free enterprise? He takes more than $1 million from Fannie/Freddie, the kings of crony and phony capitalism, and defends it to this day; while attacking, in 2012, private equity and the creative destruction that has made America the world’s most successful economy. I expect that economically illiterate nonsense from Pelosi and Michael Moore, not from a self-described “bold conservative.”
4- The Democrats never recovered on foreign policy from Vietnam. What makes you confident that Gingrich has recovered from his Vietnam, when he was outflanked by President Bill Clinton and crushed by the Democrat MSM in the government shutdown battle of 1995-6? Review this photo and this news item, for example, if you are too young to remember that or were not paying attention then. The next president faces ferocious budget battles to save our nation. If he is shell-shocked from an earlier failure, how can he be credible in the tough negotiations ahead?
*
William F. Buckley’s Two-part Test still makes the most sense: we should support the most conservative candidate who can win in November. As we debate the very open question of which of our four candidates that is, let’s hear answers to the 8 questions above.
